Chris Van Hollen communicates with his hands.
They swoop and weave with his words. There’s the sideways chop and the open-palm push. He does a thumbs-out, double-finger point.
Sometimes, when trying to make a point, Van Hollen stretches out and holds his ideas steady between his hands.
The words have been coming faster than ever in the last three weeks. At every opportunity, the 66-year-old Democrat talks about ideas and in language you don’t often hear from a Maryland senior senator.
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“Corrupt bargain.”
“Power grab.”
“Coup.”
Van Hollen has put himself out front in the fight against Donald Trump’s unprecedented expansion of presidential powers. He seems bolder.
Words are easy things for politicians. They can be the maddening absurdist noise of American politics. It’s routine to tune them out.
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Right now, though, Van Hollen is shouting — pay attention. The nation is in a constitutional crisis, as Trump, his anointed disruptor Elon Musk and a Republican majority in Congress try to dismantle federal government as we know it.
The president and his supporters argue that he’s within his powers as chief executive and that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, created by executive order, will root out waste and fraud across a vast bureaucracy.
Van Hollen has a response.
“Last I checked, the Constitution is pretty clear — presidents are not kings,” he said.
Van Hollen is talking about the damage that Trump and Musk can do to Maryland, where 10% of the workforce is employed by the federal government.
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“We just learned they’re talking about cutting the USAID workforce from about 13,000 people to 294,” he said. “This is a blatantly illegal act.”
He’s warning of the harm that Trump and Musk will have on our fortunes, our safety and our future.
“We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history,” Van Hollen said. “Elon Musk contributed — paid over $250 million — to help elect Donald Trump and now Donald Trump is turning over the keys to the treasury and the rest of the federal government to Elon Musk.”
Caring about the U.S. Agency for International Development, its famine relief and health programs overseas might be hard when eggs are $7 a dozen, but Van Hollen sees shrinking the agency and folding it into the State Department as a gift to adversaries like China.
“Make no mistake, what’s happening at AID is just a test case for what they want to do throughout the government, which is they want billionaires to take over the process,” he said.
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Van Hollen’s goal is to awaken Americans who ignored the significance of Trump’s felony convictions, or who approve of the destruction because they’re angry, or worse, don’t care because their side lost in November.
“The end game to what they want to secure is once they get the keys to government, they do want to provide huge tax breaks and big giveaways to the wealthiest in America at the expense of everybody else in America,” he said. “Are we going to let that happen? Hell no!”
Van Hollen has spoken outside USAID and the Treasury Building as Musk’s “DOGE boys” use unchecked power inside. The senator warned about efforts to demolish consumer protections and federal education programs, cut Medicaid and raise the age to qualify for Social Security benefits.
“We have one simple message: Elon Musk, keep your hands off of our Social Security,” he said Monday, surrounded by members of Maryland’s congressional delegation outside the agency’s offices in Woodlawn.
When all you have is words, you use them whenever you can.
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“By providing Musk and his cronies access to the Treasury Department, he’s putting the confidential information of millions of Americans at risk,” the senator said.
Van Hollen is one of eight Democrats to vote against all 12 of Trump’s cabinet picks. Last week, he talked for an hour about the latest. All have been approved, because Republicans have the votes.
All Van Hollen has are words.
“On Day 1, President Trump pardoned people convicted in a court of law of beating up police officers here on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6,” he said, referring to those who attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago. “They bludgeoned them, they beat them, assaulted them. As the National Fraternal Order of Police said, that pardon sent a terrible message to law enforcement all over the country. It sent the message that political violence is OK as long as it’s done in the name of Donald Trump.”
“Then, of course, President Trump unleashed Elon Musk on the American people.”
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Not all of Van Hollen’s words are public.
He’s been talking to Democracy Forward and other groups trying to use the courts to block Trump’s orders. It filed nine of the roughly 40 lawsuits, winning three injunctions.
On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance predicted the courts will decide they can’t intervene.
“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote on X.
We’ll know soon if the courts will agree with Vance or Van Hollen.
But the senator has more to say every day.
“What we’re witnessing is the biggest heist in American history,” he said.
This is Chris Van Hollen’s moment. It isn’t clear if his words will be enough. He has to get people to listen outside of Washington.
“We have to fight this in the courts, we have to fight this in Congress, we have to fight this in the streets. We need to fight this all over America. And we need to make sure that the billionaires don’t take this country from the working people of America.”
That’s what Van Hollen’s words are right now, coming fast and punctuated with double finger-points and sideways hand-chops.
“That’s what it’s all about. Stop the coup. Stop the grift. Stop Elon Musk. Take our country back.”
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